


The Edge of the Universe

by annabelolee



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Help, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, why did i write this im sorry lmaoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:02:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24715768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabelolee/pseuds/annabelolee
Summary: “Iwa-chan, let’s go to the edge of the universe.”
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 14
Kudos: 132





	The Edge of the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> Idea from @/_roocher_ (on Insta)!! I came across this IwaOi post and I hAD to read a story about it so I wrote it myself and now I'm sad lMAO  
> All credits go to Roocher!!  
> Go check out her artwork - it's amazing!!  
> UPDATE: A BIG THANK YOU to @/yuutame (on Insta) for making a translation of this fic in Russian! You can read it here: https://ficbook.net/readfic/9588089

It wasn’t meant to be like this.

As he held a boy with wavy brown hair in the crook of his arm, Hajime wondered if his life could’ve been different had he not known Oikawa Tooru.

Oikawa’s been etched into his memory since the start of time, since the beginning of the world, and imagining a universe without him was like imagining a sky without colour. To Hajime, such a sight was impossible, and when he tried to think about a sky without blue and without pinks and reds, Hajime could see nothing but an explosion of colour. Hajime thought about the vintage movies in his mother’s basement, black and white “Casablanca” playing on his TV on Friday nights when everyone, including Oikawa, was home, and he thought about the newspaper clippings his father kept on his wall whenever Hajime’s volleyball team won a match. He thought about the printer at school that Oikawa destroyed trying to print as many copies of Hajime’s flyer as he could when Hajime ran for student council and he thought about the ink pens Oikawa left on his table for him to doodle with when class got boring.

Such trivial things, so small in comparison to the years that lay behind them, suddenly took up so much space in Hajime’s heart and he was out of breath when he snapped out of his reverie.

In other words, if Oikawa’s not there, Hajime would've lost it all.

In some sense, Hajime saw it coming. It started with the day Oikawa clutched a bug in the palm of his hand, yelling excitedly as he bounded up the steps on Hajime’s porch, his toothless six-year-old smile plastered on his dusty, chubby face.

“I caught a beetle!” Oikawa shouted, body pressing against Hajime’s shoulders as Hajime carefully set his glass of lemonade down. Hajime could smell the sweat and musty stench of grass and soil wafting off of Oikawa and he shuddered in disgust, a bit (if not very) grossed out that he now knew what Oikawa’s body odour smelled like, but never pulling away.

Hajime took one look at the beetle and said, “You killed it.”

Bright brown eyes widened in shock and when Oikawa realized what he’d done in his bout of excitement, he threw his head back and let out a wail. Round, wide tears slid down his cheeks as he bawled, screaming his throat out as he sobbed on his knees on Hajime’s porch. He’s always been an ugly crier, maybe the ugliest crier Hajime has ever seen, but that moment right there when they were six years old and sweaty from the summer sun, not knowing any better about dead beetles and fat teardrops, broke Hajime’s heart.

“Calm down, Oikawa,” Hajime said, taking the beetle from Oikawa’s palm and hitting him softly in the shoulder. “Let’s bury it if this makes you so sad.”

Oikawa rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, nodded, and headed outside to Hajime’s garden, where they looked for an empty spot to bury the dead beetle.

As Hajime stood behind Oikawa’s crouched figure, pawing dirt over a dead beetle, hands dirtied with dust and soil, he thought about the future and what Oikawa would do the next time he encountered a dead end in the road. As Hajime pulled a sniffing Oikawa towards him, his lanky six-year-old body within Hajime’s reach and fitting comfortably and safely in his embrace, he knew that if Oikawa were to fly to the end of the world in desperation to make up for a mistake he’d made, Hajime would follow him without a second thought.

And that is why, as they lay together on the floor of the spaceship, Hajime knew he had no regrets.

He glanced down at Oikawa, face turned the other way, fingers picking absentmindedly at the stray fibres of his shirt, and he let out a heavy sigh because the world wasn’t supposed to end this way but it did for them and there was no turning back.

“Did you sleep well?” Hajime asked.

A smirk kicked up one corner of Oikawa’s mouth. “When I’m next to Iwa-chan, I always sleep well.”

“Very funny, Oikawa.”

“I know!” Oikawa turned around to shoot Hajime a bright, bright grin that never quite reached his eyes. “Haven’t I told you this before? My life goal is to get rid of the wrinkles on Iwa-chan’s face and leave him looking ten years younger!”

“Are you calling me-“

“Let’s go look at the view.” Oikawa untangled himself from Hajime and stood up, brushing invisible dust specks from his clothes as he waddled over to the large window at one corner of the spaceship.

He looked small, so small compared to the wide circle that faced an expanse of everything and nothing at all. At this moment with just him and Oikawa overlooking the universe, Hajime felt so very afraid.

It had been an inevitable doom that shocked the world. The two brightest astrophysics students from Aoba Johsai, who additionally graduated top of their class as their year’s valedictorian and salutatorian, were sent on a once-in-a-lifetime experience to the International Space Station as a reward for discovering a new planet on the edge of the Solar System. Hajime and Oikawa’s Senior Science Fair project had caught the eyes of many intellectuals and scientists worldwide when they proposed the discovery of a new planet a few thousand light-years away from Pluto, initiating that it could’ve been the reason for the dwarf planet’s recent abnormal orbit. They were right, and to honour this discovery he and Oikawa were sent on a trip to the International Space Station as a gift.

A gift like this has never been given before, a treat that should’ve never been initiated but was too late to take back.

A misprogramming in the rocket left the shuttle going haywire, and Oikawa and Hajime were thrown off their course.

No one saw it coming, but a project initiated so quickly and so rapidly was bound to have its flaws. It’s just that no one imagined it would be this fatal.

When they watched the atmosphere disappear beneath them at an alarming speed, Oikawa was the first to say, “What the hell?”

When they watched the International Space Station get smaller and smaller in the distance, until it was just a speck similar to the millions of stars that loomed overhead, Oikawa held Hajime’s hand with a grip so tight Hajime thought his fingers would break.

When they eventually lost contact with JAXA, Oikawa buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

Growing up, they’d talked about travelling to the edge of the universe together, exploring worlds beyond their reach and, according to Oikawa, meeting the aliens that just wished to be their friends, but never did they imagine that they would do so in this manner.

As Hajime moved to stand beside Oikawa, he noticed the abnormally calm pace of Oikawa’s breathing. The universe was spread out in front of them, a beautiful blanket of black velvet splattered with stars of white, blue, and red, each glowing at their own pace, without a care for any life out there and without a care for the two boys in a broken rocket, the two smartest high schoolers in Miyagi Prefecture who had plans to change the world but had just unknowingly been sent to their deaths. The view never failed to take Hajime’s breath away and he reached out to grab onto the panels in the walls to steady himself.

“Scared, aren’t you?” Oikawa asked.

“Never.”

“If you don’t show your true emotions once in a while, Iwa-chan is going to die a heartless athlete.”

“Don’t reprimand me, Shittykawa.”

“It’s true,” Oikawa’s voice hardened, and Hajime dared to steal a glance in his direction.

Which he wished he’d never done because Oikawa wore an expression Hajime has never seen before. His eyebrows were drawn together, a frown sitting on the edge of his smile, and when he gripped his arms with his hands, his fingertips shown white. His nails were ugly and his finger pads were cracked, all due to his nervous biting and the restless fidgeting that he did whenever Hajime pretended to sleep, Oikawa thinking that Hajime wouldn’t see.

But Hajime knows Oikawa like the back of his hand, and he knew that Oikawa was terrified, and Hajime didn’t know what to do.

It was a while before either of them talked, and when one of them finally decided to say something, it was Oikawa who spoke up first.

“So this is the end,” Oikawa said, gaze fixed on the window. He uncrossed his arms and casually put one hand on his leg, his good leg, and leaned forward, closer to the glass.

Hajime watched Oikawa’s nails dig into his knee, leaving red dashes when he pulls his hand away, and Hajime has to force himself to cross his arms, clear his throat, and tear his gaze away. “Yeah.”

Oikawa’s silent again, drumming his fingers absentmindedly on his knee, before turning his head to look Hajime in the eyes. Oikawa’s gaze sears through him and Hajime leaves him on the edge of his peripheral vision, unwilling to meet his eyes for a reason he knew too clearly.

“Is that really all you have to say?” Oikawa’s voice comes out cold and his words are rushed as if he has so much to say but he doesn’t have enough time to say them. And Hajime knows that that’s the case, that their clock is ticking down and that their days have been numbered since the day they left Earth. It has been four days, four days without consuming anything except water and Hajime felt weak. Judging by the bags under Oikawa’s eyes and the dull look on his face, Hajime knew he felt the same way.

Hajime knows they don’t have a lot of time left. After all contact was cut with the world, too fast for them to process, Hajime had been left with miles and miles of words on his tongue but no chance to say them. His parents will never hear them, his friends will never know what he wants to say, and all of the people that has ever meant something to Hajime would never know what Hajime wished for them.

Hajime thought of his friends back in Miyagi, thought of Matsukawa and Hanamaki who were probably flooding JAXA’s inbox with demanding emails and angry slurs, desperately tearing at his and Oikawa’s science fair work, trying to understand how the universe works so they could find them, and he thinks of Kindaichi and Kunimi, his underclassmen whom he’d gotten to know so well after their defeat against Karasuno, and he thinks of Kyoutani most of all, the persistent kid who tried tirelessly to beat him in various sorts of questionable events.

He thought about the people that mattered to him, and he thought about Oikawa, sitting not too far away from him, fighting his own demons inside his head. He wanted to remind Oikawa to stay stronger and to fight harder because, between the two of them, Oikawa’s always been the more reckless one, acting on impulse and what he thinks is best for him without ever considering the consequences. He acts without second-thought, without rationale, and sometimes it leaves him in difficult situations and hospital beds but it also leaves Hajime feeling impressed and thrilled.

He wanted to tell Oikawa that he was thankful that Oikawa never gave up on him easily because if there was anything Hajime did better than Oikawa, it was blaming himself.

And he knew that he would never have enough time to tell Oikawa everything he wanted to say at this very moment.

“We need to preserve as much oxygen as possible.” Hajime chose to say instead.

Oikawa bit his lip, fighting back the slur of angry comments Hajime knew he wanted to make, and said instantaneously, “We’re still going to die. It’s too late.”

As much as Hajime didn’t want to admit it, he knew that there was no way they could be saved. They were too far out, too far gone, and JAXA didn’t have the time or the bother to search for them anymore. It was hopeless. They were no more than a speck of dust in an abandoned building, impossible to find and impossible to take back.

So this is their fate. Who knew it would come to this?

“Yeah…” The simple word took all of the air out of Hajime’s lungs.

Oikawa took a deep breath, shut his eyes tightly, and let out a loud, anguished scream that echoed from the back of his throat. He threw his head back and he wailed and Hajime flinched because it was the saddest, truly the saddest sound in the vast emptiness of the universe. Oikawa sobbed, all the while emitting the most terrible, the most horrible, the most sorrowful sound he’s ever heard from his own throat. In that sound alone, Hajime heard the pain that Oikawa carried with him through their many years together, the pain collected from working so hard in the evenings as both a volleyball captain and a top student, the stress piled high and eventually crushing him.

All that work, all of the endless nights drinking coffee and forcing himself to stay awake, was for nothing in the end. They were here on a spaceship headed nowhere and Hajime would never get to see a future that the two of them deserved.

And Oikawa was angry and he was sad but he didn’t know how to express it, so he dug the palms of his hands into his eyes and he screamed, “We’ve made it this far too… and we worked so hard for this, but this is how it ends?!”

 _It’s not fair, Oikawa, it’s not fair at all._ “I won’t be able to see Takeru graduate…”

 _We deserved the world, Oikawa, and it wasn’t given to us._ “And I wanted to see Makki beat you at arm wrestling at least once…”

 _If I could turn back time to turn down the offer I would do it, Oikawa, even if means that we’ll never see a world outside of Japan, because at least we’d still have countless years ahead of us._ “And I wanted to make fun of Tobio-chan once we got back home a-and… and…”

Hajime tore his gaze away from the window and watched as Oikawa’s shoulders shook with every sob, his old intimidating demeanour fading away to reveal the frightened boy underneath, too young to face problems like this one and too talented to be deserving of them to begin with. At any given day, Hajime would be the first one out of his seat, always keeping a level head to look for a solution, a way to fix things as a person who knew Oikawa better than Oikawa knew himself. No matter what mess Oikawa got himself into, Hajime would be there with absolute certainty, because a simple problem could always be solved if Oikawa had Hajime with him.

The difference this time is that Hajime had no way of saving them anymore.

“Iwa-chan…” The ugly nickname that Hajime had hated ever since they were children bore a heavy weight, years and years of emotion thrown into a simple word that suddenly meant so much at this hour. Hajime watched Oikawa cry, wiping desperately at the tears that couldn’t stop coming, and he watched Oikawa’s body shake with all the memories he’s suppressed and all the memories he’ll treasure for the rest of their time together.

He thought about the time they were eleven and Oikawa got a toy rocket for his birthday, telling Hajime the second he’d opened it that one day, they’ll go out into the universe together, travel to galaxies near and far, and find the aliens who just wanted to be their friend. He remembers Oikawa’s words clearly as if he was reliving that moment again, and he remembers Oikawa’s face when Oikawa grabbed his arms and said, “ _Iwa-chan, let’s go to the edge of the universe._ ”

“Thank you for always being by my side.” Oikawa choked out.

Hajime felt weak. His legs feel like they’re about to give out underneath his body, and the muscle and height he’d worked on and been proud of for the past three years of high school suddenly felt like a burden. He’s never felt weaker in his entire life, never felt more useless, and he doesn’t remember what being awake and well-rested feels like anymore. He was so, so tired.

But he made the jump anyway, and he put all of the strength he had to push off of his feet and loop his arms around Oikawa, burying his face in his best friend’s shoulders, pulling the captain and his setter towards him, feeling that familiar body within his reach, and he finally let himself breathe.

He had so much to say but he no longer had the time to say them. Years and years worth of memories and promises will die with him, in this lonely spaceship in the middle of nowhere, and Hajime doesn’t know if anyone would ever be able to find them. This is the end, and even though Hajime never thought their final moments would be this way, he’s grateful for the years he got to spend with the wavy-haired boy in his arms and he thanked the universe for allowing them to exist in the same timeline, the same world, and to reach the end of their roads together.

What more could he say except his words of gratitude? He’s glad he got to spend his life with Oikawa Tooru, even though their plans for a future together have disappeared to nothing but letters on paper and words on their lips. At the end of the day, he’s grateful, he’s thankful because he and Oikawa made it, they’ve made it to the edge of the universe.

And even though there are thousands of other things that he wanted, that he would’ve preferred, there’s no one else that Iwaizumi Hajime could’ve asked for who could love him greater.

This is the end of a life he loved, and Hajime’s thankful that he got to spend it with Oikawa.

He shut his eyes and held on tighter.

“…yeah.”

**Author's Note:**

> ehehehe whoops i'm sorry i'm sad too bUT comments and kudos are very much appreciated yay!!


End file.
